We get a lot of questions about SEO here on WordPress.com, and no wonder — you work hard on your site and want to get the word out! SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO recommendations are intended to help your site rank higher and more accurately in search engines, like Google. Say you write a blog about sailboats. When someone Googles “sailboats,” how many pages of results do they have to scroll through before they see a link to your blog? The goal behind having good SEO is to increase your website’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking.

Ideally, you want your link to be on the first page of results. The best ways to accomplish this are:

consistently publish useful, original posts about sailboats; and

promote your blog in intelligent ways to people who are looking for information about your topic.

The more traffic your blog receives for sailboat-related searches, the…

Speaking of moving on from Google Reader, did you know that you can import your subscriptions directly from Google Reader into the WordPress.com Reader? We launched the Reader about 18 months ago; it’s responsive to fit any size screen, you can like and reblog WordPress.com content without leaving the news stream, and if you run out of new posts to read, you can discover new content in the Recommended Blogs section.

To import your subscriptions, just visit the WordPress.com Reader import page; you’ll be reading your feeds in the WordPress.com Reader in three clicks or less, or your money back.

Google to pay $7 million for privacy violation

Google on Tuesday agreed to pay a group of states $7 million to settle complaints that its Street View cars violated people’s privacy.

The settlement with 37 states comes nearly three years after the company admitted to collecting information like passwords and e-mails from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks its cars were passing by. The Internet search giant that it will take steps to make sure the company does not tap into networks again in the future. As part of the settlement, Google has also agreed to destroy the personal data it collected. Source: CNN

This was a report on CNN telling us what we already knew but never said it out in the open hoping its false. Ironically, its true. Google has been fishing data and storing it.

Its not surprising that Google has been doing these kind of violations. Google admitted this only when it was probed. Its worth saying that Google could be storing even more illegal data that should not be stored. Google has all the sources for doing this, like web searches, You Tube, Picasa albums, android phones, chrome browser, you name it, Google is everywhere.

Our lives are dependant on Google and Google is dependant on us using its services to give it precious data it can use to earn money. Why are we so dependant on Google? Can we move on from Google? (I don’t have an answer yet)

Google is not the only entity in question, it can be Facebook, Microsoft and all other popular web companies could be doing this privacy violations as you read this!!!

All we can do is limit the information we share with the web in whatever manner possible. Share your thoughts

Today, I bought Windows 8 Pro. Yes. You heard it right, I did buy a software.

For people who know me, I would never buy any software, especially when there was an option available. But somehow I went ahead this time and bought a licensed copy of Windows 8 Pro for INR 1999. This is my install experience from buying to writing this post.

The first thing I did was to Google for sometime trying to get an understanding of problems faced by others. This gave me a sense of the potential issues as well as some so idea about the entire process.

Now it was the time to download the Windows 8 Upgrade assistant. The assistant correctly displayed Windows 8 Pro as an option to checkout after scanning my pc for Windows 8 compatibility. I was doing this from a laptop belonging to my uncle. When I choose to do a checkout, it gave me an error.

“We can’t get that info right now….”

I tried the option repeatedly but to no avail. The error kept on coming every time. Then I decided to switch to another machine. This time it worked, and within minutes I was charged for INR 1999. Then the download process began. The download took over two and a half hours to complete. Post the download I used a USB stick to create a bootable media and installed Windows 8 on my new desktop.

The installation process was good, more human than the previous Windows versions. The messages on-screen were easy to understand with a large font making more easy to read. I liked the changing background colours, it was something different.

I had an idea that Windows 8 would be different and Microsoft showed this before I could begin. I decided to login using my live id/Microsoft Account. During the time my user was being created, I was shown an animated graphic explaining how to bring up the charms using the mouse.

After login, all my profile along with my contacts and pictures were in sync from my Windows phone, ready to use. This is my start screen…

All in all the experience was good, I am exploring all the option I an explore. I must say this tough, Windows 8 Pro for INR 1999 is a good deal.

I like the “Freshly Pressed” items on WordPress. I usually ready them and browse through my favorite blogs every now and then.

I have a Windows Phone and WordPress displays the blogs very well on the phone. However, I always wanted something more. I was hoping that the awesome guys at WordPress would give me an app on the Windows Phone platform. I know some of you might say that there is already an app from WordPress for the Windows Platform, but you must agree it’s not the ideal blog reader that i wanted it to be. I am also a developer wanting to do interesting stuff. So I decided to build an app for WordPress myself.

WordPress provides a good set of API(s) (a lot of them) for developers trying to consume items from the WordPress world. For the start, I used the freshly pressed and the get posts API(s) for my app.

This is what the app looks like…

Panoramic view of WordPress for Windows Phone app

You can view freshly pressed posts and latest news from WordPress. Then there are some latest posts from about 15 tags on WordPress.

The first screen shows the Freshly Pressed items. These items are displayed in a nice grid to give a good visual appeal. You can click the item to read the item in full.

Freshly pressed view

Reading a post in WordPress for Windows Phone

The second screen shows the latest news from WordPress. Get the latest happenings around WordPress at your finger tips.

News from WordPress

Options like refresh provided in the app

Open in browser option for all posts

The last section shows the latest posts from 15 tags on WordPress. Every time you refresh the tags section you would see that the application automatically (magically) selects the top tag category.

Posts from Music tag

Posts from Photography tag

Tag selections

As shown above, the sections support options like refresh, open in browser. For the open in browser option just tap the post for a little time for the option to appear.

Here are some other screens from the app

Light theme

Post in light theme

Horizontal View

Horizontal Post View

So, did you like the app and want to give it a try… Download the app now on your windows phone. The app is a paid app but I have enabled a FREE trial.